“Eat more healthy! Eat organic leafy greens!” The bleached-smile exhortations of the nutritional elite ring out from websites and health shows. So we trundle over to the grocery store and are greeted by the sight of an $8 bundle of organic spinach that would barely feed a rabbit — much less a whole family. Then we grumble to Twitter, repeating the common line that it’s just not financially possible for us to buy those health foods. We mumble through mouthfuls of “food” from a Burger-World paper sack that it’s not our fault we can’t afford ridiculously priced, real food. Not everyone has an organic farm in their backyard; not everyone has a 6-figure salary that can support a green smoothie habit. Not everyone can eat healthy.
Hold up! This whole story, familiar as it may sound, is a fallacy embodied. It doesn’t have to be that way.
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Yes, we need to eat more leafy, organic greens. Many of our American dinner plates are painfully, tragically devoid of nutrition and the tradition of cooking greens as a daily part of our diet. And yes, we need to eat organic ones — as the pesticides coating the surfaces of commercial veggies are nothing to ignore. But no, they are not prohibitively expensive — not all of them. And no, your only other option for a full stomach is not prepackaged garbage masquerading as nutrition. Real food is not more expensive than fast food. You just have to think outside the takeout box (and outside the grocery store box) because some of the best, most nutritious, and widely available foods are right outside your door, absolutely free for the taking.
Enter wild spinach.
Wild spinach is a weed that knows no socioeconomic bounds. It grows among the fancy cultivated tea roses in the gated community and fills the abandoned lots of the city. It’s probably growing in your garden or next to the sidewalk right now. When I lived in a poor city neighborhood, I allowed this wonderful plant to take over much of my postage stamp of a backyard, and in return, it fed me and my family countless meals for free. Now, when I find it on our homestead, it’s a familiar friend … even when (annoyingly) pushing past my seedling corn.
I’d like to introduce you to this abundant weed. I bet you’ve met it before, but had no idea it was food. Let’s fix that!
Finding and Identifying Wild Spinach
Chenopodium albumis a plant of a dozen common names — this is one of the many reasons why knowing the scientific name of a plant is imperative when it comes to identifying it correctly. I’ll be referring to it as wild spinach for the purposes of this article, but you’ll also find this plant called lamb’s quarters, goosefoot, pigweed, bacon weed, melde, bathua, frost-blite, or fat hen, to name a few. I take its multitude of titles as a marker of how useful this plant has been in the past for humans and animals alike.
Chenopodium albumis found pretty much anywhere across the United States. ThoughC. album, the feature plant of this article, is listed as a debatably European weed (it’s been in cultivation so long nobody’s really sure of its origin), it is very closely related withC. berlandieri,a native plant that was used as a food and grain source by Native American Nations for thousands of years. These plants also hybridize and have incredibly diverse forms. So all that to say — it’s not going anywhere anytime soon, and you’ll not need to worry about overharvesting when you find a decent patch of it. Pluck those leaves at will.
Wild spinach is a summer plant, growing in abundance as the mercury rises and the sun blazes. It endures, too, growing all the way until the leaves start to fall. In my personal foraging calendar, it graciously takes up the greens-for-dinner mantle once pokeweed has started to mature. It’s typically found in sunny places where the soil has been disturbed. This is a huge list of areas including river bottoms, sun-soaked slopes, construction sites, any garden plot, crop fields, backyards, semi-arid areas, pastures, abandoned lots, and areas disturbed by recent floods.
In appearance, I find the plant to be distinctive. The leaves alternate, growing on a striped stem that often has a bit of red where the leaves join with it. The leaves grow in a vaguely arrowhead shape with wide teeth or lobes along their edges. As with most plants, those growing in direct sunlight will have more sculpted edges than those growing in partial shade. And most distinctively, the undersides of the bluish-green leaves are coated with an unmistakable whitish powder — it will rub off on your fingers if you touch it, giving the leaves a distinctively gritty feeling. The powder is harmless and rubs off when you wash the plant for consumption, but it’s a key characteristic. You’ll especially find this white powder on the leafy tips of a branch where new growth is forming. Aside from helping with identification, this powdery layer makes dew drops bead beautifully on wild spinach leaves. Grab your macro lens and get some gorgeous early morning photography, if you happen upon it.
If you catch the plant growing in early summer, it may be only a foot tall. That’s usually when you find it peeking between the tomatoes in your garden. But left unmolested, it will easily grow between 3 and 5 feet tall, and up to 7 feet in optimal growing conditions.
当植物成熟时,它会伸出枝干,开始产生平淡无奇的花茎。这种花很小,不引人注目,但它们会产生大量黑色、发亮的小种子。经过仔细观察,有些人可能会注意到它们与藜麦有显著的相似性。And in fact, that recently popular Andean grain is also part of theChenopodiumgenus.
In the fall, the plants turn a lovely fire red before they die. This is usually when the seeds are ripe and falling. Grab a handful of the abundant, bitty grains and spread them where you want to find a haul of wild spinach next year.
Look-Alikes
To my knowledge, there aren’t any problematic look-alikes for wild spinach. The only plants I’ve found that have a similar appearance are other just-as-edible members of theChenopodiumgenus. ThoughC. albumis probably the most widespread, those who live in the eastern United States will likely also encounterC. hybridium, the maple-leaved goosefoot.This species is more tolerant of shade, often growing in hardwood forests. It also lacks the distinctive whitish powder on its leafy undersides, but is nonetheless, just as edible and useful. There are many other members of this genus that are locally abundant across the United States. As you grow in botanical literacy, check your local flora guides for theChenopodium生长在你所在地区的植物。
Note: Samuel Thayer mentions in his bookThe Forager’s Harvest,that Mexican tea and epazote may be unsafe to eat in quantity. Apparently, they have a strong smell and look quite different from other similar plants (and have been reclassified asDysphaniaambrosioides).
Harvesting Wild Spinach
In the late spring and early summer, you can harvest the entire plant. The stem should be tender enough by that point to not pose a problem in your finished dish. Once the heat of summer sets in and the plant really takes off growing, however, the main growing stem will quickly become way too tough to eat, or even break easily. The leaves, no matter what stage, however, are always prime pickings.
Plucking individual leaves from 5-foot plants is incredibly tiresome, however. So, I’ll share my method of harvesting buckets of greens in short order. If you want to leave the plant standing to produce seeds later on, hold the tender growing tip in one hand to keep the branch taught, then, skipping that first tuft of leaves, run your closed hand down the length of the stems. The leaves and tender little branches will snap off effortlessly.
If you’re cleaning out plants from the garden and already ripped them out, you just need to run your fist against the grain of the plucked stem — laying them on a picnic table will make it easy to get things organized. After you’ve twisted off the tender growing tip as well, place handfuls of greens in your bag or basket, and throw the cleaned stems in the compost pile. Within minutes, you’ll have a heap of food for dinner.
关于野生菠菜,我有一个安全注意事项,这与植物本身无关,而是与它的生长环境有关。作为一种富含矿物质的绿色植物,这种植物从土壤中吸收所有丰富的营养。这一迷人的特性使野菠菜成为生物修复实验中有用的植物,因为它能够自然地去除土壤中的重金属。但这也意味着,生长在受污染土地上的植物本身也受到了污染。因此,当你采摘野生菠菜时,要对环境进行检查,判断它是否受到了污染。植物生长在你的花园或院子里没有问题,植物生长在城市的一个废弃的地方可能也没有问题,但是植物生长在垃圾场、停车场或其他工业化地区可能就不安全了。
我应该提一下,种子是藜麦的近亲,也是可以食用的。然而,我也应该提到,我从来没有经历过收集到足够多的食物来烹饪它们的过程。The seeds ofC. album它们很小,从花萼中分离出来有点麻烦——至少我尝试过的方法是这样的。不过,我在这个部门的经验不足不应该阻止你。有考古记录表明,不同的美洲原住民确实采集并食用这种种子作为谷物。我很想知道他们的流程。
There are also different species ofChenopodiumplants that have different-sized seeds. The maple-leaved goosefoot in particular, has much bigger seeds, but since it doesn’t grow in my area, I haven’t gotten to mess around with it. If any of you have experience with using this underutilized food source, please share your know-how with us below!And in the meantime, you can check out Ashley’s endeavors using water to winnowC. albumgrain at her website: Practical Self Reliance.
Cooking Wild Spinach
野菠菜是菠菜的完美替代品,你可以用任何方式和传统菠菜一样使用它。生的、枯萎的或完全煮熟的,它既美味又多才多艺。事实上,比起种植的菠菜,我更喜欢野生菠菜,因为我发现它不会给我那种矿物质的奇怪感觉,不会像我吃商店买的叶子那样有牙齿吱吱作响的感觉。相反,它的味道虽然温和,但明显是绿色的,带有非常野生的花香。而且营养是无可比拟的。I don’t give much stock to nutritional analyses of wild greens as they vary so widely according to their environments,but if these numbers here are anything close, it’s safe to assume that wild spinach is full of good stuff your body needs.
If you’re accustomed to cooking wild greens, you’ll not have any trouble coming up with ideas for this abundant food source. But if you’re feeling a little unsure, here are some easy ways to use one of my favorite, summer wild foods.
最简单的方法之一就是把一把洗干净的叶子扔进你正在烹饪的任何东西里。例如,今年夏天收获的第一批野菠菜被洗净,放入意大利式炖菜中,与鸡蛋和玉米煎饼一起食用。叶子很快就会煮熟,增加颜色和营养,而不会改变味道。野菠菜和姜蒜一起炒,或者和芝士一起做煎蛋卷也很美味。
A simmered and blended wild spinach paste is also an incredibly versatile ingredient. Add it to soups, blend it with eggs and spices and bake it in a pie crust, or add tomatoes, olive oil, and garlic to make a verdant and bright pasta sauce.
My absolute favorite way to use wild spinach, however, is in a wild version of palak paneer — those delectable homemade cheese cubes swimming in a fragrantly spiced green gravy. I’ll be detailing my recipe (along with others) in an upcoming article, so stay tuned!
And true to its name, “fat hen” wild spinach is relished by chickens. But once you figure out how tasty and useful it is, you may have a hard time sharing it with them.
Most people have seen this weed and having it growing somewhere nearby, and I’d wager that a majority of them have no idea it is food. Can you imagine the healthful impact of adding this one, healthful, easy-to-identify and easy-to-cook green to everyone’s knowledge base? That pile of overpriced spinach at the grocery store would stop holding so much esteem, that’s for sure. And maybe the misconception that healthy food is the privilege of the well-off would lose its edge as well. Good food is everywhere, and available to everyone who has the eyes to see it. I hope that you make acquaintances withChenopodium album. It’s a good friend to know!
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